A data structure is known from the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) SR (Structured Reporting) standard. DICOM-SR objects contain references to other DICOM-SR objects in a “DICOM Current Requested Procedure Evidence Sequence” and a “Pertinent Other Evidence Sequence”. Both sequences contain hierarchically ordered identifiers which are called DICOM UIDs (unique identifiers). In this context, DICOM UIDs are provided for the “study”, “series” and “instance” levels.
The generic publication “DICOM Structured Report Document Type Definition” by Rita Noumeir, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, Vol. 7, No. 4, December 2003, discusses the possibility of using the XML text format in conjunction with the DICOM standard.
In objects and files according to the DICOM-SR standard, it is not possible to find a reference to the content of the referenced DICOM-SR objects in the sequences so that somebody viewing the sequences cannot determine why the objects referenced in a sequence are considered to be relevant for the respective DICOM-SR object, without looking at the document content of the referenced object. It is only possible to see that reference was made to the referenced DICOM-SR object.
Furthermore, such data structures are known from the HL7 (Health Level 7) CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) standard. According to this standard, a reference to external references is specified in a respective file body of the respective file.
This standard, too, thus requires the document content of a respective referenced file to be analyzed in order to be able to selectively access objects which are relevant under certain queries or in a particular constellation.
The publication “HDF User's Guide”, version 4.1r5 of the University of Illinois in NCSA Scientific Data Technologies of November 2001 proposes a hierarchical data format called HDF. Files according to this format have a data header, a data description section and a section including the data elements. In this context, various types of files can be stored in the section including the data elements. The data description section contains information on the files stored in the section comprising the data elements.